Big Brother Vampire
by Spikey44
Summary: The inner musings of a bored monster, or in other words, the reason that everything is always Stefan's damn fault. A reflection on brotherhood from the very worst  best  big brother in existence. Sometimes Damon wishes Stefan would stop lying all the time
1. Big Brother Vampire

**Big Brother Vampire**

_Disclaimer: Don't own a thing; I'm only borrowing._

Mystic Falls is a town with many secrets; vampires, werewolves, witches and doppelgangers – those are just the tip of the iceberg and truthfully vampires, werewolves, witches and doppelgangers aren't much of a secret in this messed up sinkhole of a town anyway. There are far juicier secrets lurking beneath the macabre underbelly of Mystic Falls.

For example: Damon Salvatore, vampire sociopath extraordinaire, reads self-help manuals.

He also watches Oprah and Doctor Phil and _fucking empathises_ with the screwed up losers too stupid and needy to have the sense not to go on national TV and advertise the fact that they are screwed up pathetic losers. Admittedly he is usually completely wasted when he does this. Wasted, miserable, too apathetic to kill anyone and reduced to waiting for his little brother (who is, by the by, one hundred and sixty-two years old) to come home from school so he can mock him and beg for attention like the love-starved puppy he really is.

See Damon may have an inferiority complex the size of Everest and he may be nearly pathologically jealous of his little brother. He may have almost zero impulse control, numerous anti-social personality disorders and a rampant drinking problem that would have surely killed him by now if he wasn't already one hundred and forty-five years dead – but! But! Damon is a very self-aware vampire.

He knows he has a problem. He knows he has a lot of problems (most of them beginning with the letter "K" and ending in agonising rejection). He is (at least in his own head) totally up front about all the ways in which he is basically a complete failure as a man, a brother, even a vampire, but none of that self-awareness is worth a dime because - and this is the real kicker- he can't fix any of the shit that's wrong with him.

So he reads. He reads books that tell him, in the most impersonal way possible using jargon that would have the author run out of town as a damned quake back in the 1860's that he, Damon Salvatore, is a lonely insecure little man searching for meaning in all the wrong places. This isn't any big surprise, his father was much better at telling him he was worthless back in the day anyway. Father didn't need to resort to flinging psychiatric complexes around either. Nope, none of that hokum for Giuseppe Salvatore; instead he just flat out disinherited his eldest son, packed him off to war and made it real clear that he wouldn't be all that broken up about it if Damon came back dead or not at all.

Sometimes, in between idle musings regards his own rampant narcissism and borderline personality disorders (although, really, borderline? He crossed the bridge into psychosis-ville a loooong time ago) Damon wonders if Stefan really gets it. Does poor martyred soul, ever-suffering saint Stefan actually get the whole point about why Damon really, really hates him (in a totally co-dependent- if-you-die-I-lose-the-only-thing-I-live-for kind of way)?

Damon doesn't think so because really when you get down to it, Stefan is pretty much the biggest hypocrite Damon has ever met (and Damon has met a lot of hypocritical jerks in his time). The whole no human blood fad he's had going for the last few decades only just scratches the surface of his little brother's hypocrisy, but hell, might as well start with that, right?

See Damon knows that the hackneyed tortured soul routine his little brother enjoys so much is just as much an act as Damon's insistence that he's perfectly happy with this endless existence living as a glorified tick riding his brother's back for eternity. Damon is firmly of the opinion that Stefan only indulges in guilt about his (un)life as a Thumper-exsanguinating fiend because it gives him something to do. Living forever is really freaking dull when you don't have a _reason _to live at all. That's the real curse of vampirism; not the blood drinking, but the complete pointlessness of living forever unable to change, unable to age and grow and mature, yet forced to watch the world change, grow, and mature around you. Damon hates it. As a human man he had lived with the clawing fear that the world moved too fast for him to keep up, no matter how hard he tried to outrun it. He had known even then that sooner or later everything that gave his life meaning (his brother's admiration, the desire in a pretty girl's eyes) would eventually mature into contempt and pass him by. As a vampire that fear is now his constant reality. He has to try so hard just to maintain his brother's animosity; Stefan is always slipping through his fingers.

Stefan, Stefan, Stefan – his little brother really is the better vampire when all is said and done. He's found his reason to exist and he does it so well; subsisting on his own guilt, feasting on his over burdened conscience and drawing people in so, so easily. People love him for his suffering and never call him on the lie. No wonder Katherine wants him back. No wonder Elena loves him more than her own self-preservation.

Damon would want him back too except that he never really had him to begin with. Because that's not how big brother/little brother relationships work. Damon understands this in a way Stefan doesn't (Stefan, for all that he is forever going to high school, does _not_ read psychology). Saint Stefan thinks he's forever cursed with the burden of his rabidly psychotic older brother – he's not – and deep down in his hypocritical soul even Stefan-the-liar has to know that. Stefan can kill Damon anytime he wants to. He nearly did after the whole Lexi mess. Not to mention the Alaric thing, and yeah the history teacher wasn't much of a threat (and is a fairly okay guy now that Isobel thing has blown over) but still, Stefan didn't even give him the heads up that Alaric wanted him dead. Stefan basically lies to Damon all the damn time ("I'll help you get Katherine back Damon"/ "I want you gone Damon"). Damon doesn't need his cheap psychology books to tell him that this is not the basis of a very healthy fraternal relationship.

It's completely all on Stefan too.

Damon does not lie to Stefan, after all. He promised him an eternity of misery and he's done his best to deliver. He even told Stefan his plans for Katherine (which was stupid, yeah, but whatever. The whole Diabolical Plan was headed for SNAFU territory anyhow so what the hell.) Damon is always very interested in Stefan's personal life too, just like family should be. He encourages him to be the best he can be (as in a bloodsucking vampire fiend). He lets his little brother drag him into all his dramas (Damon come quick – mystery bad guy of the week has kidnapped another one of Elena's stupid, narrow-minded and judge-y friends – help!) Yet Stefan does not want Damon happy in return. He does not want Damon to hang out with his little human friends (even though Alaric likes him way more than he does Stefan). He does not want to share his toys (or girlfriend) with his big brother. He does not want Damon hosting bacchanalian orgies in the front parlour on school nights. In short Stefan is all about the take and not the give in this relationship.

Still this is pretty normal because Stefan is the little brother. He's just playing his part. From the moment he was born Stefan has been the usurper; the one who pushed Damon into the shadows. The one who was better; the one their father liked. The one Katherine claims to love and the one Elena would die for. Stefan is the one that matters (in all things – always) and Damon – well- Damon is just the big brother. He has only existed these last hundred and forty-odd years as an extension of Stefan.

This is the crux of all his learning; this is what the books have told him: Damon, the _real_ Damon Salvatore, died in 1864. The thing that wanders around wearing his corpse is not that man anymore. He is just his ghost; the ghost of a man who was already obsolete long before he tried to step between his brother and his brother's beloved monster in a vain attempt to make himself matter.

It was Stefan who turned him into this. It was Stefan who would not let him die back when the whole world fell apart in one night of mobs and torches and so many lies he is still drowning in them now. This is where the hatred comes from; not the loss of Katherine, not the taunting memories that come with watching his brother canoodle Katherine's alter ego. No Damon hates Stefan for the one lie Stefan will never feel guilty about.

Stefan told him he wanted them to be brothers forever.

Stefan promised him the world on a mouth-watering crimson wave and then he cast Damon aside. He replaced him with a self-serving guilt that forever excludes everything Damon is, was, and could ever hope to be.

This is why he hates Stefan. This is the misery he wants his brother to know for all eternity. In the end, when all is said and done, Stefan was the only one who has ever really _needed_ him. Needed him to be imperfect; needed him to be the monster in this twisted familial equation, and the cause of all that precious guilt Stefan needs so badly just to survive eternity. And Damon knows this. He has always known. Stefan needs to hate him so that he can tolerate his own unnatural existence. So that's why Damon will keep living this not-life, because even if _he_ hates it, even if it hurts more than dying ever did, being Stefan's big brother is the only thing Damon has ever been even remotely good at.

(And Damon needs so badly to be _good _at something even if all he can ever be good for is being bad.)

One day, if he's lucky, Stefan will even admit the truth in all its sad, desperate, messed up perfection – and maybe then, _just maybe_, Damon won't have to hate his lying bastard of a little brother so much.


	2. Little Brother Vampire

**Little Brother Vampire**

_A/N: Initially I never intended to write a second chapter – but then Stefan wanted to say his peace as well, so here it is._

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Mystic Falls is a town with many secrets and more than its fair share of liars; Stefan Salvatore knows he has more than his share of the former and far too many of the latter to ever confess them all.

For example: Stefan, tortured soul par excellence, regrets a great many things in his long and unnatural life (it comes with the territory of being a vampire with a conscience, after all) but the one thing he doesn't regret, even now, is the one thing he probably should regret most of all: Making his big brother turn.

But he'll pretend that he does. He'll even lie to Damon and tell him he's sorry, and in so doing abuse a moment of closeness the two haven't shared in over a hundred years, because he knows (though Damon denies it) that Damon wants him to be sorry for taking his choice away, for ruining his moment of pointless self-sacrifice in the name of a love that was only ever one-sided in the first place.

Stefan is a very good liar. He always has been. Even before he and Damon turned, back when they were human, Stefan was a liar – or at least, he was deceptive in a way his brother never was. It started with their father. Stefan always knew he was the favourite and he always knew that was intrinsically unfair. Yet he didn't really care. It was nice to be the one Father respected; the one who was looked upon as virtuous, level-headed, responsible and mature for his age. It was also incredibly easy. All he had to do to keep his pride of place was let Damon take all the risks, speak out of turn, and basically do all the things Stefan might want to do but didn't quite dare. Or better yet, convince Damon to take him with him when he went poaching on the neighbours' lands, or sneaking out to the taverns, and then, when their father inevitably found out, it was easy to let Damon take the blame – because Damon was older, wilder, and already well broken in to his role as the black sheep.

(That's why after Katherine was gone and they had the choice to die or be damned, Stefan had been so angry that Damon wanted to make the "right" choice. It felt like a betrayal. Stefan hadn't wanted to die for a woman he hadn't ever loved and he didn't see why Damon had to pick then, of all times, to develop a sense of morality.)

Stefan will never, ever, admit this to Damon although he thinks Damon already knows. Just like Stefan will never admit that for all his debauchery and sin Damon has never actually lost control to his bloodlust – only Stefan does that, because Stefan is the one who can't handle temptation.

Stefan will also never admit that he knows Damon feels worthless and inferior at least ninety percent of the time. Stefan knows this because Damon _has always felt that way_. This is one of the reasons Stefan has never believed in the "humanity off switch" vampires are supposed to have because really, if Damon had ever truly stopped caring he wouldn't have been so hurt for so long when Stefan left him and moved on alone.

(Long ago, in a letter from the front lines, Damon wrote to him that "all flesh is grass" while describing the horror of another battlefield massacre. The words have stayed with Stefan and although he won't admit it, they have only gained piquancy since he became a vampire. It sometimes feels to him, while watching people he has come to know age and wither and die away that humans are nothing more than background scenery and the only two people who truly matter are he and Damon.)

After Damon lost control (again) and snapped Jeremy's neck Stefan told him yet another lie. He told him that if it wasn't for Katherine (and the threat she posed) he would have killed Damon for what he had done to Elena and her brother. He doesn't think Damon believed him, but he also doubts that Damon knows the real reason he was so damned angry. The reason had nothing to do with Jeremy and everything to do with the fact that once again Stefan was watching Damon self-destruct before his eyes - and there was nothing he could do to stop him. (Stefan is so tired of watching Damon fuck up over and over again.)

If asked Stefan would claim that he will never forget Lexi; you don't get over the loss of your best friend. This isn't exactly a lie. Stefan mourns Lexi deep in his heart and her name makes him ache with regret. He will always wish (so very much) that he'd figured out sooner what a spectacularly bad idea it was for Lexi and Damon to inhabit the same town, even for a single day. The rub however comes when he realises how little he actually resents Damon for her death. He realises then, thinking of Lexi, that every time he's told his brother that he'll never forgive him for all the death and destruction he rains down on both their heads has always been, and ever will be, nothing but more lies heaped upon lies.

(Once Stefan told Elena that he thought love was the most powerful force in existence; this was in fact a lie. Love is not the most powerful emotion he has ever known: _need _is. Stefan loves Elena (in a way he doesn't remember ever loving Katherine) but he also _needs_ her (mostly to keep proving with every word and deed that she is not Katherine and will never become her). It is this need more than the love that convinces him that he would do just about anything to keep her safe. Just like, years and years ago, it was need that compelled him to force Damon to turn. This is why, in Stefan's mind, need is more enduring than love.)

The biggest lie Stefan has told (recently), was once again to Damon (because in the end you always lie to the people who matter most – and Elena deserved a break). He told Damon that they would not be repeating history. He meant the words but not the subtext. It's not the sharing that bothers him (never actually was – compulsion or no compulsion). Instead it's the thought that it will all end the same way that makes his teeth ache with impotent anger (and he doesn't think he's ever hated Katherine more than he does now).

The one lie he won't tell just because not even Elena is brave enough to broach the subject, is that along with never repeating history, he's also not prepared to try and put right what went so horribly, horribly wrong before. (So instead he watches his brother and Elena silently and thinks again about temptation and need and all the things he's getting tired of lying about.)

One day, he promises himself (and again he is lying) he will admit the truth. He won't be afraid of the need that drives him, or the temptation of his own desires. Instead he'll tell Damon he's _not_ sorry he refused to let his stupid, desperate bastard of a big brother kill himself for a sham love affair, and he'll tell Elena that history damn well is worth repeating – so long as it's with the right girl.

And maybe then, _just maybe_, Stefan won't have to keep lying so damn much.


End file.
